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Palm OS Spinoff

Posted by Hemos on from the interesting-move dept.

iCharles writes "According to this SEC filing per this Palm Infocenter story, it would appear that Palm is spinning off its OS devision. I'm a Handspring user, so it sounds quite interesting to me."

2 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. hercules using arm? by htmlboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The story mentions that at least one future Palm is going to be using an ARM processor (Hercules 1.0). i guess that means we'll finally see linux on genuine Palm(tm) hardware, at the expense of have a cool processor name like the Dragonball VZ.

    It also brings up interesting prospects for the future of Palm OS. If Palm's OS division is making a Palm OS for an ARM processor, will we start to see Palm OS as an option on iPaq's and th like? It's just my personal opinion, but I like Palm's interface more than WinCE, but right now, the hardware that runs it is slower. I guess we'll see.

  2. Why did they spin *THIS* part off? by hacker · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I for one, do not understand this. Their hardware business is the lower cost-center. They get licensing from all of their OEM partners, and frankly, Palm's hardware sucks. They haven't yet innovated in any way that they can call their own. They're on third and fourth generation devices, and they're still shipping with 8 megs of memory.
    • Symbol Technologies licenses the Palm and creates several units which can do RF, 802.11, and include a barcode scanner (high-output LED)
    • Handspring invents the Springboard slot and implements pseudo-USB support for connecting the devices.
    • Sony mimics that with the MemoryStick, but adds VFS support, and takes Handspring's USB protocol, changes one function, and makes their own spin on it.
    • Handera, formerly TRG builds upon that with a sliding graffiti area (thanks for incorporating my idea from #palmchat back in 1998 on that one), and adds CF and SD slot architectures (still serially connected storage though, can't "run apps" from each card concurrently)
    • Palm comes out with the replacement to the Vx, called the m505, and includes the Sony VFS extensions, the Handspring hardware port design (internally) and the Handspring USB modifications, but changes it enough to make yet a third fork of this pseudo-USB protocol. They also make sure to make every single thing about this new device completely incompatible with every single other thing available for their devices, even down to a 2mm change in the stylus length (I have a more detailed enumeration of those changes found here).

    Why does Palm think they're about to, in any way, create a new hardware device that they think will surpass these existing innovative devices? Palm is ALWAYS behind the curve on hardware advances in this area. We're not even talking about comparing them to the iPAQ, VTech Helio, Agenda, Yopy, and the other dozens of non-PalmOS, non-WinCE handheld PDA devices.

    Currently, Palm's OEMs for the PalmOS® software include:

    • Sony
    • Handspring
    • Handera (formerly TRG)
    • Qualcomm (bought out by Kyocera)
    • Kyocera
    • Symbol Technologies
    • ...and others.

    They get licensing from each and every one of these OEMs. Their hardware is the last thing to ever be updated. It is without a doubt, the least innovative portion of their business.. and they're choosing to keep it?!

    I don't quite understand the motive behind this decision on their part. I suppose I'll find out at Palmsource in February.